This blog is to encorporate discussions on Lost Continents, Catastrophism, The origin of Modern Humans and the Out of Africa theory, Genetics and Human Diversity, The Origin and Spread of Civilization and Cultural Diffusion across the face of the Globe.

During a field expedition to Ethiopia, a team of scientists noticed something odd: The golden jackals there looked more slender with a whiter coat than they do elsewhere. Now, genetic analyses suggest these oddities are not jackals at all but instead more closely related to gray wolves.

In fact, until now these “highland jackals” were referred to as Egyptian jackals (Canis aureus lupaster), and had long been considered a rare subspecies to the golden jackal (C. aureus).

With new genetic evidence in hand, the team suggested the animal be called the African wolf to reflect its true identity.

“It seems as if the Egyptian jackal is urgently set for a name change,” said study researcher Claudio Sillero of Oxford University’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU). “And its unique status as the only member of the gray wolf complex in Africa suggests that it should be re-named ‘the African wolf,’” said Sillero, who has worked in Ethiopia for more than two decades.

(The gray wolf population extends to the Sinai Peninsula but doesn’t exist on mainland Africa.)

Look-alikes

“We originally set out to study the jackals in Northern Ethiopia, and discovered this new species by chance through the genetic analyses,” said study team member Nils Christian Stenseth, a research professor and chairman of the Center forEcological and Evolutionary Synthesis at the University of Oslo in Norway.

Stenseth, Sillero and their colleagues, including scientists from Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia, analyzed the DNA from the feces of five individuals of the mysterious animal, one of which they had filmed defecating so they could link for certain this creature with its DNA sample. They got another tissue sample, for DNA analysis, from a road kill in Arsi in southeast Ethiopia. And DNA samples were also obtained from golden jackals in Serbia.

The DNA comparisons showed C. a. lupaster is more similar to the gray wolves than to golden jackals.

The work also suggested gray wolves reached Africa around 3 million years ago before spreading throughout the Northern Hemisphere.

“Our findings suggest that the colonization of Africa by the ancestral stock of gray wolves took place about 3 million years ago and is today embodied in the animal that has hitherto been called the Egyptian jackal,” Stenseth told LiveScience.

The new wolf is a relative of the Holarctic gray wolf, which lives in northern Europe and northern Asia, the Indian wolf and the Himalayan wolf.

African fauna

The findings add to our knowledge about the so-called Afroalpine fauna, an assemblage of species with African and Eurasian ancestry that evolved in the relative isolation of the highlands of the Horn of Africa.

“A wolf in Africa is not only important conservation news, but raises fascinating biological questions about how the new African wolf evolved and lived alongside not only the real golden jackals but also the vanishingly rare Ethiopian wolf, which is a very different species with which the new discovery should not be confused,” said study team member David Macdonald, director of Oxford University’s WildCRU.

Rare Ethiopian wolves split off from the gray wolves even earlier than the newly discovered African wolf.

Wolf conservation

Currently, the golden jackal is listed as a species of least concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which means the animal doesn’t fit into any of the “endangered” or “threatened” categories.

“In Ethiopia, the golden jackals, which presently includes the cryptic African wolves, are systematically persecuted because of their threat to livestock,” the researchers write. Even so and even though the Egyptian jackal is supposedly extremely rare, it is not protected, they add.

To get an idea of the true population numbers and distribution, the team said a thorough survey is needed in both Ethiopia and adjacent countries. Stenseth and his colleagues hope to continue their research with a study of the animal’s ecology – how it interacts with other animals and its environment.

Now this is important to me because I had been a longstanding adherant of the theory that the domesticated dog came Out Of Africa along with early Homo sapiens and that the earliest dogs had some sort of relationship to the Golden Jackals. The Golden Jackals seem to have been the forerunners to wolves and coyotes in general, and this new Highlands wolf species seems to be part of the ancestral wolf population which had not left Africa yet.

The theory had its beginnings in a 1997 article by UCLA professor Robert K. Wayne. Here is a reprint of that notice:

Dogs May Date Back 60,000 to 100,000 Years to Hunter-Gatherer Societies, UCLA Scientists, Colleagues Find

Dogs have ancient origins dating back perhaps 100,000 years or more -- much older than scientists had thought -- UCLA scientists and colleagues found.

While many scientists believed, based on archaeological records, that domestic dogs dated back only 14,000 years, molecular genetic techniques reported in the June 13 [1997] issue of the journal Science show that man's best friend is much older. The new research also confirms that dogs evolved from wolves.

"Our data show that the origin of dogs seems to be much more ancient than indicated in the archaeological record," said Robert K. Wayne, UCLA associate professor of biology. "The origin of dogs dates well before the development of agricultural population centers that occurred approximately 10,000 to 14,000 years ago, and goes back to hunter-gatherer societies. While many people think a high level of sophistication was required to domesticate wild mammals, our data imply that very primitive societies may have had domestic animals."

Scientists believe from archaeological records that many domestic animals, including cats and cattle, originated within the last 14,000 years. Cats may have been domesticated as recently as 7,000 years ago, Wayne said.

Wayne noted that his techniques do not enable exact dates to be determined for dogs. "Because of the extrapolation involved in the calculations, it's possible that the first dog dates back 60,000 years, or perhaps more than 100,000 years," he said.

"It is possible that the first dog dates back 60,000,or perhaps more than 100,000 years...."

For the research, Wayne and his colleagues studied DNA sequences from 140 dogs representing 67 breeds -- including golden retrievers, German shepherds, collies, St. Bernards, poodles, bulldogs, Irish setters, rottweilers, English sheepdogs, fox terriers and chow chows. They also analyzed 162 wolves from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Russia, China, India, Italy, Portugal, Spain, France, Sweden, Saudi Arabia, Israel and other countries, as well as jackals and coyotes.

The scientists analyzed DNA sequences from the control region of the mitochondrial genome -- a region with a high mutation rate. They were surprised by the great diversity of DNA sequences they found within dogs.

"We expected to find DNA sequences in dogs that were closely related to those in wolves, perhaps even indistinguishable from those in wolves," Wayne said. "We expected to find a few different sequences in dogs; instead, we found 26.

"We initially suspected the amount of genetic diversity in the marker we analyzed would be very low because the only way that diversity accumulates is through DNA mutations over time, and 14,000 years is not enough time for many mutations to appear.

"We have found that the origin of dogs is much older than previously believed because the genetic diversity within dogs is much greater than one would find if their origin were as recent as 14,000 years ago," Wayne added. "Given the amount of genetic diversity that we found, we can calculate how long it should have taken to achieve this diversity if mutations alone were driving the process. Our calculations suggest the first domestic dog might be as old as 100,000 years or older."

While some scientists thought that dogs evolved from jackals or coyotes, Wayne and his colleagues found no evidence to support that view.

I at first challenged the finding about dogs "Not being related to jackals and coyotes" by citing opposing evidence that not all jackals are equivalent and that the golden jackal was more closely related to wolves and coyotes than the others. And I cited behavioural differences between them which seemed to me to make the golden jackals the more likely ancestors to domesticated dogs.

Now that it has been found that a population of "Golden jackals" actually IS more or less an Afican Gray wolf [of the Eurasian species], that simplifies matters a great deal.

The earliest dogs were much like the Australian Dingoes and my theory was that the earliest Australian colonists already had dogs when they went in: and that further implied that the Out of Africa migrants at least as far back as 65000 years ago were already genetically distinct as the Australian Aboriginal groups and carried with themselves both the domesticated dogs and the knowledge of watercraft (rafts and dugout canoes). The African descendants of the earliest dogs would also include the Basenjis.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

This is interesting because it seems the last British Mammoths were washed into a cave hole, five adults at once, at a date which seems to correspond to the Younger Dryas (C-14 dates are disputed in this case as well and are so disputed generally for the event owing to the fact that the event itself changed the C-14 proportion in the atmosphere) This is from the CFZ blog where both Karl and I post regularly. The Copyright to the article belongs to Karl Shuker and it is reproduced without profit for educational purposes.Monday, 7 February 2011 WHEN THE MAMMOTHS CAME TO TOWN A mammoth discovery in Shropshire! (Dr Karl Shuker) [I wrote the original version of this article - one of my earliest publications - in March 1987, and it appeared later that year in a now long-defunct British monthly magazine called The Unknown. In order to maintain its then-current, now-historical flavour, I am republishing it here in largely unchanged form (except where newer information and discoveries have required some minor updating of material). I wish to thank the Shropshire Star newspaper most sincerely for very kindly supplying me with a photograph of some of the mammoths' remains for inclusion in this article.] When (if?) the good weather returns, I plan to visit the Shropshire Hills Discovery Centre at Craven Arms, near Ludlow, ensconced in some of England's most beautiful countryside, in order to see the life-sized replica of a certain, very special Ice Age mammal – and, in so doing, revisit an extraordinary discovery that I first documented way back in 1987. Allow me to explain. One of the most remarkable yet unexpected palaeontological finds of modern times in England took place in the county of Shropshire, and involved a discovery of truly mammoth proportions. The Shropshire saga began inauspiciously at the end of September 1986 during a session of excavations by contractors working in an ARC Western-owned sand and gravel quarry at Condover, a small village just north of Shrewsbury. Quarryman Maurice Baddeley was using a dragline to scoop up clay and peat sediment from the quarry's upper surface in order to reach the gravel underneath, piling the removed sediment into a towering pinnacle for subsequent levelling. During this activity, his dragline's bucket drew up from a muddy pond a long, stiff object that Mr Baddeley initially dismissed as a metal or wooden post, probably a telegraph pole, and tipped onto the sediment pile. Upon later, closer observation, however, just prior to the pile being demolished, he realised that this `pole' was actually a gigantic bone – measuring 4-5 ft long! At this same time, Eve and Glyn Roberts of nearby Bayston Hill were walking their dogs here and saw the bone. Realising that it might be something important, Eve lost no time in telephoning the Shropshire Museums Service, and relayed what they had seen to the County Museums Officer, Geoff McCabe, who promptly sent out a team to investigate. To their great surprise and delight, the team discovered that the intriguing object was nothing less than a limb bone from a woolly mammoth Mammuthus primigenius – that hairy elephantine epitome of the Ice Ages. Naturally the scientists immediately combined forces with the contractors to monitor future digging in the hope of disinterring further remains - with deserved success. For during the next week, 18 more specimens were obtained, including various vertebrae and a jawbone bearing two enormous teeth. Fossil remains, even when as massive as those of mammoths, are unexpectedly fragile when unearthed. Hence to ensure their continued survival, the precious Shropshire specimens were swiftly transferred to nearby Ludlow Museum, where they could not only be more precisely identified and age-determined but also be carefully cleaned of debris, shielded from harmful sunlight, and allowed to dry very slowly to prevent distortion. Meanwhile, the regular media reports concerning the mammoth's discovery, as featured in the Shropshire Star in particular, had incited very considerable public interest - resulting in the brief unveiling of these remains for a press conference and photo-session held at the local Acton Scott Farm Museum on 7 October. FORMAL SCIENTIFIC EXCAVATION Among the scientific representatives present at the conference was Dr Russell Coope - Reader in Palaeontological Sciences at the University of Birmingham. On the morning of 9 October (and subsequently working in conjunction with mammoth expert Dr Adrian Lister of the University of Cambridge), Dr Coope led the first formal scientific excavation at the quarry seeking more mammoth remains. Moreover, news of this most significant search had already travelled beyond Shropshire, because the BBC's long-running children's television show `Blue Peter' was represented on site by presenter Mark Curry and an attendant film crew, recording the excavation for inclusion within a future episode (which was screened on 30 October). The four-day dig (financed by ARC and the Shropshire County Council) brought together a team of scientists from the University of Birmingham and the Shropshire Museums Service plus numerous enthusiastic local volunteers. Their principal focus of attention was the 20-ft-high sediment pile already hewn out of the quarry by the draglines, because it was this sediment that had originally contained the mammoth's skeleton - and from which, therefore, the team hoped to disinter and disentangle it, piece by piece. AN OVERWHELMING SUCCESS By the end of Day 1, even the most optimistic expectations had been exceeded, because a tally of more than 50 specimens - ranging from tiny wafers of tusk fragments to entire limb bones - had been unearthed! These were lightened by removing loose debris, and each specimen was then delicately packed separately within an opaque, fully-labelled bag for direct transportation to Ludlow Museum for identification and preservation. Deer and insect remains, as well as pollen samples, were also collected. Remains from the Shropshire mammoths (courtesy of the Shropshire Star) The search ended on 13 October, and proved to have been an overwhelming success, because with more than 200 separate bags of fossilised remains, it seemed certain that almost the entire mammoth skeleton had been obtained. Pride of place within the collection, however, was surely the pelvic girdle, because part of it was obtained intact as a single, massive, and substantially heavy portion bearing one complete acetabulum (the socket for femur articulation) and obturator foramen (a large gap between the pubis and ischium bones on each side of the pelvic girdle in mammals). Nevertheless, there was even more exciting news to be disclosed. NOT ONE, BUT FIVE! Put quite simply, scientific examination of the collection obtained at that point (as well as during three subsequent excavations, the last one spanning 15 June to 3 July 1987) ultimately revealed the presence of not one but five mammoths! One was an adult (originally thought to be a female, but confirmed by Russian scientist Vac Garutt at the Leningrad Museum of Science in 1988 to be a male), believed to have been 30-32 years old when it died. The other four were juveniles. Three were each represented by a largely complete lower jaw and various other remains. Two of these latter three juveniles were 3-4 years old, and appeared to be of opposite sexes. The third was larger, and was aged 5-6 years old. One of the 3-4-year-olds was found during the first dig, as was the 5-6-year-old, whereas the other 3-4-year-old came to light during the summer 1987 dig, as did the fourth juvenile, thought to be 4-5 years old. Prior to continued scrutiny, however, it was imperative that their fossilised remains be cleaned thoroughly to remove as much tenacious debris as possible. So to ensure effective washing, an outdooor area normally reserved for the cleaning of public transport vehicles was utilised! Not surprisingly, on 1 November this singular event attracted a large crowd of spectators. The scientific team estimated that approximately 80 per cent of the total skeletal content of the mammoths had been obtained during the recent excavation. Nevertheless, one major item was stil1 missing - the adult mammoth's skull. Undaunted, the team decided to instigate a second search, and once again, following a public appeal for local volunteers, a sizeable party was assembled, wielding a formidable armoury of shovels and spades. Yet sadly, despite a most valiant and determined effort sustained throughout the weekend of 15-16 November, the skull was not located, although several additional minor bones were unearthed. A third excavation took place not long afterwards, with a fourth, final dig taking place the following summer, but the skull was never found. As suggested by Geoffrey McCabe, it may have been removed soon after the adult's death by human contemporaries. FUTURE DESTINATION Even without the skull, however, the Shropshire specimens still constituted one of the most comprehensive collections of mammoth skeletons ever discovered. Indeed, the County Museums Service hoped to retain them to form the centre-piece of an extensive educational exhibition, depicting the appearance of Shropshire during the Ice Ages when inhabited by mammoths. In turn, this would also greatly benefit local tourism. Conversely, in view of their national scientific significance, it was equally possible that they may be taken for permanent display in London. Thus in December 1986, a local conference was held to discuss the mammoths' future destination, attended by Shropshire Council members, ARC representatives, and Drs Coope and Lister. To the Shropshire community's delight, it was decided that the collection should be retained locally, for the planned Ice Age exhibition. Furthermore, ARC gave permission for future digging in 1987 in pursuit of any further remains (including the adult mammoth's elusive skull), and pledged financial participation in subsequent scientific studies upon the bones already obtained. Moreover, in March 1987 the entire collection was transported to the University of Birmingham for research purposes. The Shropshire mammoths' scientific debut - via a formal paper written by Coope and Lister and published in the scientific journal Nature on 3 December 1987 - was certainly one of the most thrilling episodes in British palaeontology for very many years, supplemented by continuing detailed studies. Even so, although certainly not the types of fossil to be found every day of the week, mammoth remains have been uncovered in the UK before - so why were the Shropshire mammoths of especial importance? This can be readily answered as follows. PHENOMENAL COLLECTION British remains of mammoths and other fossil elephants almost invariably consist of a few bones, teeth, or fragments. Furthermore, a large proportion of these originate from the London region, although a notable find took place in Nottinghamshire during summer 1986, when two huge proboscidean (probably mammoth) limb bones were hauled up by an excavator during the construction of a car-park at Worksop's Bassetlaw Hospital. Consequently, the discovery together of a largely complete adult mammoth skeleton and no less than four partially complete juveniles is truly phenomenal. Indeed, possibly the only British find in any way comparable to this within modern times was the unearthing in the early 1960s during excavations at an Aveley quarry in Essex of a virtually entire mammoth skeleton. Beneath this was a similarly near-complete skeleton of a straight-tusked elephant Palaeoloxodon antiquus, which by sheer coincidence had died on the very same spot (but undoubtedly several millennia before the mammoth - for the two species were not contemporaries). Needless to say, this unexpected but very remarkable find quickly brought a team from the British Museum (Natural History) to the site to remove the collection for preservation and study. YOUNGEST BRITISH MAMMOTHS During the last Ice Age (Weichsel/Würm glaciation), spanning the period 80,000-10,000 years BP (Before Present Day) when M. primigenius still roamed Britain, Shropshire was a birch-dominated tundra interspersed with sparse vegetation and clay-walled marsh-like pools created by melting subterranean ice left stranded by retreating glaciers. Dr Coope opined that the Shropshire mammoths may have wandered into one such pool while seeking vegetation. Although all elephants can swim, they cannot climb steep inclines such as the pool's walls. Consequently, the mammoths would have perished - a tragic end for such majestic creatures. Coope explained that their remains were discovered between an upper layer of peat (shown to have been deposited 10,000 years ago) and a lower layer of glacial gravel (deposited 18,000 years ago) - another clue to the Shropshire mammoths' especial importance. More precise analysis of the bones themselves, via carbon-dating techniques, yielded an age of approximately 12,800 years BP. Hence, as Coope announced to the media, the Shropshire mammoths were not only the most complete but also, by around 5000 years, the youngest mammoths so far discovered in Britain and had survived beyond the coldest stage of the last Ice Age. In June 2009, Lister revealed that a new, even more accurate method of radiocarbon dating applied to the remains by researchers from the British Museum (Natural History) had yielded a date of 14,000 BP, but this still meant that they were Britain's youngest mammoths. In addition, it was suggested that they might even participate at some future stage in one of the most remarkable fields of mammoth-related zoological research currently in progress - the cloning of mammoth DNA. The raw materials (muscles, soft tissues) for this revolutionary work are normally obtained from ice-entombed specimens obtained in Siberia. However, Prof. Alan Wilson of the University of California suggested that the Shropshire specimens may be sufficiently well-preserved to possess samples of soft tissue capable of being used for DNA cloning purposes, and he duly made contact with the Shropshire team to discover more concerning this exciting possibility. In short, the mammoths of Shrewsbury certainly appear set to occupy a prominent position within future scientific research for some considerable time to come. During 1988, I visited the temporary but exciting exhibition of the Shropshire mammoth remains (which also included an excellent full-sized replica of a woolly mammoth, created by Roby Braun) that was held at Cosford Aerospace Museum, just outside Wolverhampton, from 1 April to 30 October of that year. The exhibition was subsequently staged in Derbyshire, Lancashire, and Newcastle upon Tyne, before closing in August 1991. The replica mammoth now resides within the Secret Hills exhibition at the Shropshire Hills Discovery Centre in Craven Arms, whereas the Shropshire mammoth bones are ensconced in Ludlow Museum and Resource Centre, and are recognised to be the third most complete remains of woolly mammoths to have been discovered anywhere in Europe. Not a bad outcome for a `telegraph pole' that had been dug up by chance and then tipped unceremoniously onto a pile of sediment. After I saw Karl's original posting, I added this extended commentary in my own group: Before the modern explanation of the Ice Ages took hold, in Victorian days, the generally-accepted explanation was that the Ice Age deposits were "Diluvium", deposited by Noah's deluge. At that time, the large numbers of animal bones found jammed into caves in Ice-age deposits were considered to be large numbers of animals seeking refuge from rising flood waters or washed in by wave action. In many cases, that explanation will not work, and primarily because there are many distinct strata involved, of different mineral deposits, different chemical composition, and obviously laid down at different times. However,in certain locations including Bermuda, Gibraltar and Malta, the condition of the deposits do seem to indicate inrushing sea waves brought in large quantities of dead animals and birds, trees, and including seashells in the deposit. The question asked in olden days was, whatever could have knocked the birds from the skies at the same time as the debris were being washed into these caves? and there was a readily-supplied answer in Noah's deluge. One of the more important books on the notion was published in 1823 by William Buckland, under the title of Reliquae Diluvianae (Relics of The Flood) and included many examples of caves in England where it seemed the animal remains had been washed in by wave action at a recent date. Another such work was Joseph Prestwich's publication in 1895, On Certain Phenomena Belonging to the Close of the Last Geological Period and Their Bearing Upon the Tradition of the Flood. This also included many accounts of animal bones jammed into caves and rock-fissures in the UK, North America, France and Italy, and on the Mediterranean islands includig Corsica and Sardinia. Prestwich theorized that a wave from the ocean had submerged Western Europe to a depth of at least 1000 feet; and the same thing must've happened to Eastern North America, and in the Arctic in Alaska and Siberia where the mammoths were also killed in large quantities at the same date (Charles Darwin later noted that the large animals of South America must have died at the same time and in order for that to have happened the event 'Must shake the framework of the entire world') So basically, that evidence still exists and has NOT been explained away by later authorities, nor yet can it be explained away so long as we keep getting the same general Younger Dryas C-14 dates on all of these animal remains. (Prestwich did also find evidence for the wave in the Neolithic age, but from deposits along the Atlantic coast of North America, including the "Garden Clays" of New York City and several caves in the South, this clay layer is later and distinctive. The Southern examples have a clay layer that is a bright orange and covers pottery dating to about 1200-1500 BC.)So there was also a secondary event which confused things, but that still does nothing to invalidate the evidence for a large sea-wave covering the land up to 1000 feet in altitude at the very end of the Ice Age, at a date often stated to be 10000 BC (in round figures).Best Wishes, Dale D.

Friday, April 15, 2011

Just as an added note and because the fact is not generally known, the head of pharaoh Tut Ankh Amen is deformed in the same style as is shown for his sisters in sculpture and this form of the head is the same as the basal-Neolithic skulls found at Jericho and elsewhere in theNear-East: Egerton Sykes had speculated that Ikhanaten had been attempting to return to the original Aton religion of Atlantis and instituted a return to the original form of artificial cranial deformation that derived from the Atlanteans as part of it. That is a speculation without any documentation to back it up and it would imply that there must be some pretty specific documentaion about Atlantis in Egypt at least as late as the New Kingdom. On the other hand, it would seem like a pretty tall coincidence otherwise.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Dale Drinnon is currently having an upgrade done to his home computer system. Because of this, there shall be a short break while the upgrade is being done. Hopefully all the bugs shall be out by tomorrow and regular blog postings can resume.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Plastered and deformed skull from PrePottry Jericho, about 8-9000 BC. Deformed skulls begin showing up all around the Mediterranean at about that time, including Western Europe and Northern Africa.

The technical paper in the last installment had many good points but it failed in one particular matter: the initial widespread appearance of artificial cranial deformation came at the end of the Last Ice Age and involved the last waves of Cromagnon migrants out of Atlantis according to Lewis Spence (The Problem of Atlantis, The History of Atlantis, etc. Spence identified them as the Archaeological Azilo-Tardneoisians and some of them were already showing the initial signs of cradleboarding as infants in that the backs of their skulls were flattened and the outline of the skull when seen from above was much shorter from front to back than either their ancestors or even contemporaries out of the same ethnic group.

Climate stage chart extracted from Secrets of the Ice Age, with the corresponding dates. This matches up with the construction of Atlantean history as I have outlined it below. The red line indicatesthe general trend of deglaciation from the Glacial Maximum stage and there were several floods of freshwater-meltwater which resulted from the process, each one of which raised the mean sea level some tens of meters.

This is a page from Donnelly's Atlantis: the Antediluvian World (1881) which remarks on the unusual circumstance that the Egyptian and Babylonian calendars coincide at a date about 11500 BC. The updated version edited by Egerton Sykes further mentions that the Mayan and Indian calendars also coincide at about the same date and it must signify that some signifcant event happened then. This seems to be an Astronomical date and other sources in Antiquity confirm it. I believe it is the date of the founding of the Atlantean Empire and at just about when the cycle of the Precssion of the equinoxes put the Spring equinox in the sign of Leo. ALL the dates Plato mentions in connection to Atlantis are derived from the Precession of Equinoxes, the Great or Platonic Year (Which the Egyptians certainly knew about before Plato)

A North-African skull of this period, one which I should have put up for comparison to the North American skulls from Spirit Cave and Kennewick Man when I ran the first part of the "World of Atlantis: The Atlanteans" blog entry earlier. Lewis Spence suggested in The History of Atlantis that the actual Atlantean empire Plato spoke of was a relatively recent addition on the Atlantean scene at the time of the invasion, and that the Civilisation of Atlantis came out of North Africa, That "Poseidon" as spoken of in the Critias represented a Culture-hero analogous to Quetzalcoatl, and that the original person would have been a Capsian and belonging to the Iberian or Mediterranean 'race'. The wave out again was what he hypothesized as the Azilians and one direct outcome was the emplacement of the Neolithic cultures in the Near East starting in Palestine and Phoenicia. This was supposed to have been about 10000 years ago.

One of the types of people introduced into Europe at this time (8000-9000 BC) was a sort of persisting Cromagnon type which was marked by a flattening of the back of the head and the milder sort of cranial deformation produced by use of the cradleboard alone without the addition of another pressboard in front or tight head bindings. Evenually the type resurfaced all over Europe again as typical of the wealthier burials in the Copper and Bronze ages. It was obviously the mark of the local aristoctracy.

Image from Wikipedia demonstrating the use of the pressboard on the bound infant, to produce the desired pointed head look. and below, a reconstruction of a German woman from a burial during the period of domination by the Huns, ca 500 AD

Other traits that came along with the artificial deformation of the skull and sometimes sid to be a direct consequence of it are the surgical techniqie of trepanation and the development of extra bones at the joints of the skull (Inca Bones) Trepanation definitely arrives along with the Neolithic in Europe and it is thought to have been done largely to relieve the pressure of stressed bones at the joints in the skull. Skulls with Inca bones have also been found in the initial Neolithic at cyprus (B&W photo below) and at Crete.

It would seem that the drier conditions in the Sahara at about 12000 BC (that is 14000 years ago) drove the population there into the cycle of famine, war, and then Patriarchal dominance as specified in the long paper posted last time, and that an elite military force established upon Atlantis shortly thereafter. They may well have come there as hired mercenaries rather than as invaders, and after the harsher conditions occurred on Atlantis as well, they eventually took control of the situation. The result of which was that Atlantis became a Patriarchal Sun-Hero-Divine-King-Worshipping state such as Donnelly envisioned in the first place. It was something which was unusual in those early times but probably not unprecidented: the Sahara was undergoing periods of extreme drought att throughout the Ice Age. There could well have been earlier events which resulted in the earlier adoption of circumcision and genital mutilation, possibly in 25-30000 years ago or maybe even 60000 years ago when one of the large movements out-of-Africa took place. The genital mutilation trait could have spread to Australia at that early date (there is also evidence for cranial deformation in Australia as well, but nobody knows how far back it goes) If there WERE turns to Patriarchy in these earlier events, then the trends to go that route subsequently died out in Europe and Asia since we have no good evidence for its persistance there. However, they might have been retained in Subsaharan Africa for any length of time, even all along perhaps.

Message 98 from Dale's Atlantis Files group on Yahoo;February 2007

Basically, the Platonic Kritias (Critias) narrative encapsulates a history of Atlantis that can be converted into a rough chronology. There was an early Golden age of peace and Plenty and then a worsening of conditions that led to a ruthless period of expansion. Going on what is known of climate in the period and some inferences from accepted archaeology, it seems that the history of Atlantis can be traced back to the Solutrean period and the Glacial Maximum with some assurance of continuity, in a period of hunters (who probably already knew the bow and arrow). After about 12000 BC or 14000 years ago,a period of more intensive agriculture was started on Atlantis, which is something that correlates to finds in Egypt and the Transjordan, but also correlates to the opening of the Bolling AND to Donnelly's opening of the calendar cycles from Oppert. This would be the 'Golden Age', but more so as remembered by succeding generations. the period of plenty lasted until a bit before 10000 BC or 12000 years ago, and there was a worsening of climate. The chart gives a last possible date for this as 12100 years ago, the beginning of a Dryas phase, but it was probably a gradual process. At any rate, the worsening of climate led to a period of stricter control of resources and tighter control by the leaders. Up to this point, a marilineal, probably matriarchal, queenly government was in control, backed by the priestess of the mother goddess who controlled all produce from the Earth. The Perry, Children of the sun theory states that the Heliolithic culture that later diffused around the world had a dual leadership, with a priestly class and a warrior class, and this seems to have been the setup as of about 10000 BC in Atlantis. Perry also stated that a number of derived cultures turned over to rule by a warrior elite by way of military coups and this also seemed to have occurred in Atlantis. Kingships were beginning to dominate about 10000 BC and the religion was reorganized into a state- approved hero-worshipping, sun-worshipping religion (Poseidon originally being a sky god with a thunderbolt, hence the trident) Then the climate began to ameliorate and the sun-priest-kings took it as a sign of divine favor. This would have been the beginning of the Allerod climatic phase, 11800 plus or minus 200 years ago on the chart (as late as 9600 BC by our reckoning). This initiated the period of Atlantean aggression and expansion recorded by Plato, and the entire Island of Atlantis was regimented and systematically subdivided, with every lot of land accounted for and responsible for supporting the invasion drive. This continued until the universal cataclysm that included Atlantis and millions of the inhabitants of that land among its many victims. It also severely depleted the "Athenians" as well, but enough of them survived to continue their line of descent up to the present day.

At least that's the way it shapes up to me.

Best Wishes, Dale D.

(Romeo and Juliet of Neolithic Italy. These two young people were killed and then buried in a position of embrace, irresistably recalling the doomed young lovers of Shakespeare's play. Going on the parallel it is even possible that their families were feuding with one another and they were killed for their disobedience. The burial could then have been made by sympathetic surviving friends or done in cruel mockery)

The Origins and Diffusion of Patrism in Saharasia, c.4000 BCE: Evidence for a Worldwide, Climate-Linked Geographical Pattern in Human Behavior*by James DeMeo, Ph.D.

ABSTRACT

Global geographical patterns of repressive, painful, traumatic, and violent, armored, patrist behaviors and social institutions, which thwart maternal-infant and male-female bonds, were correlated and developed through a systematic analysis of anthropological data on 1170 subsistence-level cultures. When the behavior data were mapped, the hyperarid desert belt encompassing North Africa, the Near East, and Central Asia, which I call Saharasia, was found to possess the greatest areal extent of the most extreme patrist behaviors and social institutions on Earth. Regions farthest removed from Saharasia, in Oceania and the New World, were found to possess the most gentle, unarmored, matrist behaviors, which support and protect maternal-infant and male-female bonds. A systematic review of archaeological and historical materials suggests that patrism first developed in Saharasia after c.4000 BCE, the time of a major ecological transition from relatively wet grassland- forest conditions to arid desert conditions. Settlement and migration patterns of patrist peoples were traced, from their earliest homelands in Saharasia, to explain the later appearance of patrism in regions outside of Saharasia. Prior to the onset of dry conditions in Saharasia, evidence for matrism is widespread, but evidence for patrism is generally nonexistent. It is argued that matrism constitutes the earliest, original, and innate form of human behavior and social organization, while patrism, perpetuated by trauma-inducing social institutions, first developed among Homo Sapiens in Saharasia, under the pressures of severe desertification, famine, and forced migrations. The psychological insights of Wilhelm Reich provide an understanding of the mechanism by which patrist (armored, violent) behaviors become established and continue long after the initial trauma has passed.

INTRODUCTION

The present paper summarizes the evidence and conclusions of my own seven-year geographical study on the worldwide, regional variation in human behavior, and related socio-environmental factors, a study which constituted my doctoral dissertation (DeMeo 1985, 1986, 1987). In this research, I specifically focused upon a major complex of traumatic and repressive attitudes, behaviors, social customs and institutions which are correlated with violence and warfare. My study proceeded from clinical and cross-cultural observations on the biological needs of infants, children, and adolescents, the repressive and damaging effects that certain social institutions and classes of harsh natural environment have upon those needs, and the behavioral consequences of such repression and damage.

The geographical approach to the origins of human behavior, as presented here, has allowed the reconstruction of a much clearer global picture of our most ancient cultural history than has heretofore been possible. The causal relationship between traumatic and repressive social institutions to destructive aggression and warfare has been verified and strengthened in my approach, which has confirmed the existence of an ancient, worldwide period of relatively peaceful social conditions, where warfare, male domination, and destructive aggression were either absent, or at extremely minimal levels. Moreover, it has become possible to pinpoint both the exact times and places on Earth where human culture first transformed from peaceful, democratic, egalitarian conditions, to violent, warlike, despotic conditions.

These findings were made possible only by virtue of recent paleoclimatic and archaeological field studies (which revealed previously hidden social and environmental conditions), and by the development of large, global anthropological data bases composed of cultural data from hundreds to thousands of different cultures from around the world. The microcomputer, also a recent innovation, allowed easy access to such data, and the preparation within a few years of global behavior maps which otherwise would have taken a lifetime to prepare. My approach to these questions also constituted one of the first systematically derived, global geographical reviews of human behavior and social institutions, uncovering a previously unobserved, but clear-cut global pattern in human behavior. Before presenting the maps, which display in spatial form the core of my findings, some discussion of the variables of interest, and the theory behind the maps, is in order.

Matrist Versus Patrist Culture:

The Roots of Violence in Childhood Trauma and Sex-Repression

My research was initially aimed at developing a global geographical analysis of social factors related to early childhood trauma and sexual repression, as a test of the sex-economic theory of Wilhelm Reich (1935, 1942, 1945, 1947, 1949, 1953, 1967, 1983). Reich's theory, which developed and diverged from psychoanalysis, labeled the destructive aggression and sadistic violence of Homo sapiens a completely abnormal condition, resultant from the traumatically induced chronic inhibition of respiration, emotional expression, and pleasure-directed impulses. According to this viewpoint, inhibition is made chronic within the individual by virtue of specific painful and pleasure-censoring rituals and social institutions, which consciously or unconsciously interfere with maternal-infant and male-female bonds. These rituals and institutions exist among both subsistence-level "primitives" and technologically developed "civilized" societies. Some examples are: unconscious or rationalized infliction of pain upon newborn infants and children through various means; separation and isolation of the infant from its mother; indifference towards the crying, upset infant; immobilizing, round-the-clock swaddling; denial of the breast to, and premature weaning of the infant; cutting of the child's flesh, usually the genitals; traumatic toilet training; and demands to be quiet, uncurious, and obedient, enforced by physical punishment or threats. Other social institutions aim to control or crush the child's budding sexual interests, such as the female virginity taboo, demanded by every culture worshiping a patriarchal high god, and the punishment- and guilt-enforced arranged or compulsive marriage. Most of these ritual punishments and restraints fall more painfully upon the female, though males are also greatly affected. Demands for pain endurance, emotion suppression, and uncritical obedience to elder (usually male) authority figures regarding basic life decisions are integral aspects of such social institutions, which extend to control adult behavior as well. These repressive institutions are supported and defended by the average individual within a given society, irrespective of their painful, pleasure-reducing, or life-threatening consequences, and are uncritically viewed as being "good", "character building" experiences, a part of "tradition". Nevertheless, from such a complex of painful and repressive social institutions, it is argued, comes the neurotic, psychotic, self-destructive and sadistic components of human behavior, which are expressed in a plethora of either disguised and unconscious, or blatantly clear and obvious ways.

According to Reich's sex-economic viewpoint, a chronic characterological and muscular armor is set up in the growing human according to the type and severity of painful trauma it experiences. The biophysical processes which normally lead to full and complete respiration, emotional expression, and sexual discharge during orgasm are chronically blocked by the armor, to a greater or lesser extent, leading to the accumulation of pent-up, undischarged emotional and sexual (bioenergetic) tension. The dammed-up reservoir of internal tension drives the organism to behave in a generally unconscious, distorted, self-destructive, and/or sadistic manner (Reich 1942, 1949). The above processes occur whenever, and only whenever, attempts are made to irrationally deflect or mold human primary biological needs or urges according to the demands of "culture". The denial of the breast to an infant, the beating of a child for defecation or sexual expression, or the forced marriage of young girls to old men ("child betrothal", "bride price"), are examples.

Pain-inflicting and pleasure-censoring rituals and social institutions have been present in most, but by no means all, historical and contemporary cultures. There are, for instance, some cultures (a minority, to be sure) which neither inflict pain upon infants and children, consciously or otherwise, nor repress the sexual interests of children or adults. Of great interest is the fact that these are also nonviolent societies, with stable monogamous family bonds, and congenial, friendly social relations.

Malinowski (1927, 1932) first pointed to such cultures as a rebuttal to Freud's assertion of a biological, pan-cultural nature for childhood sexual latency and the Oedipal conflict. Reich (1935) argued that conditions within Trobriand society proved the correctness of his clinical and social findings relating sexual repression to pathological behavior. Other ethnographic descriptions of similar cultures have been made (Elwin 1947, 1968; Hallet & Relle 1973; Turnbull 1961). Prescott's (1975) and my own (DeMeo 1986, pp.114-120) global cross-cultural studies have confirmed these findings: Societies which heap trauma and pain upon their infants and children, and which subsequently repress the emotional expressiveness and sexual interests of their adolescents, invariably exhibit a spectrum of neurotic, self-destructive, and violent behaviors. Contrawise, societies which treat infants and children with great physical affection and gentle tenderness, and which view emotional expressiveness and adolescent sexuality in a positive light, are by contrast psychically healthy and nonviolent. Indeed, cross-cultural research has demonstrated the difficulty, perhaps the impossibility, of locating any disturbed, violent society which does not also traumatize its young and/or sexually repress them.

A systematic survey of global historical literature independently confirmed the above correlations, between childhood traumas, sex-repression, male-dominance, and family violence, in the descriptions of various warlike, authoritarian and despotic central states (DeMeo 1985, Chapters 6 & 7 of 1986) (1). From similar historical data, Taylor (1953) developed a dichotomous schema of human behavior in various societies. Using Taylor's terminology, and expanding upon his schema according to sex-economic findings, such violent, repressive societies are called patrist, and they differ in almost every respect from matrist cultures, whose social institutions are designed to protect and enhance the pleasurable maternal-infant and male-female bonds. (2) Table 1 gives a contrast between extreme forms of patrist (armored) and matrist (unarmored) culture.

Many aspects of patrism interfere with the biology of the infant and child in a manner generally unseen elsewhere in the animal world, and some clearly increase infant and maternal mortality and morbidity. Besides the painful or pleasure-reducing rites given in Table 1, it is important to note that most patrist societies possessed, at some time in their recent or distant past, severe psychopathological social disorders designed for the socially-approved, organized discharge of murderous rage towards children and women (ie., ritual murder of children, widows, "witches", "prostitutes", &c.), with a complement deification of the most aggressive and sadistically cruel males (totalitarianism, divine kingship). A few contemporary cultures express such conditions in a fully-blown form, or exhibit residues of such conditions, and these are facts which have distinct geographical implications.

For example, given that clinical, cross-cultural, and historical evidence indicates that adult violence is rooted in early childhood trauma and sex-repression, and does not exist where maternal-infant and male-female bonds are protected and nurtured by matrist social institutions, a question naturally arises as to how the cultural gestalt of trauma, repression and violence (patrism) could have gotten started in the first instance. Patrism, with its great outpouring of violence toward infants, children, and women, which is passed from one generation to the next through painful and life-threatening social institutions, must have had specific times and places of origins among some, but not all of the earliest human societies. The assumed absence of an innate character to patrism, which derives from the chronic blocking, inhibition, and damming-up of biological urges, demands that this be so. Matrism, however, which springs from freely-expressed, unimpeded biological impulse, and which therefore is innate, would have been global in nature, ubiquitous among all of humankind at the earliest times. Indeed, natural selection would have favored matrism, given the fact that it does not generate the sadistic urges which lead to deadly violence toward women and children, nor does it disturb the emotional bonds between mothers and infants, which impart distinct psycho-physiological survival advantages (Klaus & Kennell 1976; LeBoyer 1975; Montagu 1971; Stewart & Stewart 1978a, 1978b, Reich 1942, 1949).

Confirmation and support for the above assumptions and inferences exists in the geographical aspects of the global anthropological and archaeological data, and it was a central focus of my research to examine the spatial aspects of the facts and observations gathered by different field researchers. (3) For example, certain aspects of matrism and peaceful social conditions had previously been identified in the deepest archaeological layers of some regions, with demonstrated transitions toward more violent, male-dominated conditions in later years. While some researchers have either been unaware of these newer findings, have tended to ignore them, or have objected to their implications, a growing number of studies have demonstrated major social transitions in ancient times, from peaceful, democratic and egalitarian conditions, to violent, male-dominated, warlike conditions (Bell 1971; Eisler 1987a, 1987b; Huntington 1907, 1911; Gimbutas 1965, 1977, 1982; Stone 1976; Velikovsky 1950, 1984). The geographical aspects of these findings are most telling.

A systematic and global review of such evidence (DeMeo 1985, Chapters 6 & 7 of 1986) revealed distinct global patterns in these archaeological transitions, wherein entire regions were transformed from matrism to patrism within the same general time periods, or where the transition to patrism swept across major portions of a continent, from one end to the other, over a period of centuries. Of major significance was the finding that the earliest of these cultural transformations occurred in specific Old World regions (notably in North Africa, the Near East, and Central Asia, around 4000-3500 BCE), in concert with major environmental transformations, from relatively wet to arid conditions in those regions. Later transformations generally occurred in regions outside of the new-formed deserts, associated with the abandonment of the new arid zones, and subsequent invasion of moister borderland territories. The existence of these timed environmental and cultural transitions was most important, given other evidence which suggested that severe drought and desertification had the potential to traumatically disrupt maternal-infant and male-female bonds, just as certainly as any harsh and painful patrist social institution.

Social Devastation in Regions of Drought, Desertification and Famine

Other lines of evidence lead to the conclusion that severe and repeated drought and desertification, which promotes famine, starvation, and mass migrations among subsistence-level cultures, must have been a crucial factor which would have gradually, or even rapidly, pushed early matrist cultures towards patrism. For example: 1) Recent eyewitness reports of culture-change occurring during famine and starvation conditions indicate a resultant breakdown of social and family bonds. Turnbull's (1972) heartbreaking account of the Ik peoples of East Africa is most clear on this point, but other, similar observations have been made (Cahill 1982; Garcia 1981; Garcia & Escudero 1982; Sorokin 1975). Under the most severe famine conditions, husbands often leave their wives and children in search of food; they may or may not return. Starving children and elderly family members are eventually abandoned to struggle on their own, or to die. Children may form roving bands dedicated to stealing food, and the remaining social fabric may be utterly torn apart. The maternal-infant bond appears to endure the longest, but eventually starving mothers will also abandon their young. 2) Clinical research on the effects of severe protein-calorie malnutrition of infants and children indicates that starvation is a trauma of the most severe proportions. A child suffering from marasmus or kwashiorkor will exhibit symptoms of contactlessness and immobility, with, in the most extreme cases, a cessation of body and brain growth. If the starvation has lasted long enough, recuperation to full potential may not occur after food supply is restored, and mild to severe physical and emotional retardation may occur. Other effects of famine and starvation upon children and adults have been noted, to include reductions in general emotional vitality and sexual energy, some effects of which may persist even after food supply is restored. Importantly, the infant biophysically and emotionally withdraws and contracts under conditions of famine and starvation in a manner nearly identical to the equally traumatic effects of maternal deprivation and isolation. Both sets of experiences have clear, lifelong effects which disturb the ability of adults to emotionally bond with both mate and offspring. (Aykroyd 1974; Garcia & Escudero 1982; Prescott, Read & Coursin 1975). Transillumination of the Skulls of Normal (left), Malnourished (center), and Marasmatic-Starved (right) Infants. The skull is illuminated in proportion to the amount of fluid-filled space between the brain and skull. A well-fed infant has a well-developed brain with little space and fluid between the brain and skull. Not so, the malnourished or starving child. Reproduced courtesy of F. Monckeberg (in Prescott, et al. 1975) 3) A number of other traumatic factors specifically related to the hard life in deserts and droughty regions were identified. One major example was the use of the restraining, head-molding, back-pack cradle by migratory peoples of Central Asia, which appears to have inadvertently led to the dual traumas of infant cranial deformation and swaddling. Infant cranial deformation as a social institution died out around the turn of the century, but swaddling today appears to persist in the same general regions. Normally, an infant subjected to painful restraint struggles to free itself and will cry loudly, quickly attracting the help of alert caretakers. Not so, I speculate, among famished infants strapped into a body-restraining (and oftentimes head-squashing) back-pack cradle for a long march during a parching drought. Under extreme drought and famine conditions, caretakers would become less attentive, contactless, and less willing to constantly stop and quiet a child hurting in the cranial-deforming restraints of a back-pack cradle. As desertification progressed in Central Asia, migration from region to region became a relatively permanent way of life. The archaeological record suggests that cranial deformations and swaddling subsequently became institutionalized parts of child-rearing tradition in those same areas (DeMeo 1986, pp.142-152; Dingwall 1931; Gorer & Rickman 1962). Indeed, painful cranial deformations and swaddling became an identifying mark and cherished social institution of such peoples, to persist even after they gave up the nomadic existence for a settled lifestyle. Other major social institutions, such as male and female genital mutilations (circumcision, infibulation), were found to be geographically centered on, and have their earliest origins within the great Old World desert belt, though for reasons that are less clear. Swaddling and Artifically Deformed Crania appear as complementary practices, as first developed in Central Asia with use of the back-pack cradle by migrating peoples. Infant cranial deformation has died out, but swaddling, a remnant practice, persists in most regions influenced by such peoples.

NOTE: All maps are composed of data from native, aboriginal, subsistence-level peoples. In the Americas and Oceania, these data reflect conditions generally prior to the arrival of European settlers. In the process of making the above determinations, it became increasingly apparent to me that early matrist social bonds might have first been shattered among subsistence-level cultures which had survived the devastating effects of severe, sequential droughts, desertification, and prolonged famine. With the progressive, generation-after-generation disruption of maternal-infant and male-female social bonds by hyperaridity, famine, starvation, and forced migrations, there would be a consequent development and intensification of patrist attitudes, behaviors, and social institutions. And these would gradually replace the older matrist ones. Patrism would have become fixed into the character structure just as hyperarid, desert conditions became fixed into the landscape. And once so fixed, patrism would remain with the afflicted people, irrespective of subsequent climate or food supply, given the behavior-affecting, self-duplicating character of social institutions. Patrism would thereafter appear in the moister regions of plenty by virtue Of irruptions of migrating, warlike peoples from adjacent desert regions. From the above considerations, a very clear geographical test was thereby suggested. If a mapped, worldwide spatial correlation existed between harsh desert environments and extreme patrist culture, then a clear mechanism for initiating the first trauma and repression among ancient human cultures would be identified. This would also directly corroborate Reich's sex-economic theory, which necessitated some ancient mechanism of trauma to explain the genesis of armoring. The spatial correlations which emerged from this approach were startling.

THE GEOGRAPHICAL ASPECTS OF ANTHROPOLOGY AND CLIMATOLOGY

My preliminary review of behavior and social institutions in a sample of 400 different subsistence-level, aboriginal cultures from around the world indicated that the most extreme of patrist peoples lived in desert environments (DeMeo 1980), though not exclusively so. A more systematic and definitive global analysis derived from 1170 different cultures later confirmed the desert-patrist connection, but demonstrated that the generality was not valid for all semiarid lands or even hyperarid deserts of limited geographical size, where food and water supplies could be obtained by making a short journey. Moreover, wetland regions adjacent to the largest, most hyperarid deserts were likewise found to be patrist in character, a fact which was later explained in the demonstrated migrations of peoples (DeMeo 1986, 1987). Cultural data used for this later analysis were taken from Murdock's Ethnographic Atlas (1967), which did not contain any maps, and was composed almost exclusively of descriptive tabular data on aboriginal peoples living in their native regions. Data for North and South America, and Oceania, in large measure, reflected native, pre-European conditions. Murdock's data was gathered from hundreds of reliable sources published roughly between 1840 to 1960; his data has been constructively reviewed by other scholars, and is widely used for cross-cultural theory testing. Each of the 1170 individual cultures was separately evaluated (by computer) according 15 different variables which approximated the matrist-patrist schema previously given.(4) Cultures exhibiting a high percentage of patrist characteristics received an appropriately high score, while cultures with a low percentage of patrist characteristics (with a high degree of matrism) received an appropriately low score. Latitudes and longitudes were obtained for each culture, and a regional percent-patrist average was extracted for each 5° by 5° block of latitude and longitude. Figure 1, the World Behavior Map, emerged from this procedure (DeMeo 1986, Chapter 4).

Figure 1. The World Behavior Map: For the period roughly between 1840 and 1960, as reconstructed from aboriginal cultural data given in Murdock's Ethnographic Atlas (1967), with minimal historical interpretation.

The patterns on the World Behavior Map were independently supported by separate maps of each of the 15 variables used in its construction, and by maps of other related variables (genital mutilations, infant cranial deformation, swaddling) given in the original dissertation (DeMeo 1986, Chapter 5). The World Behavior Map clearly demonstrates that patrism was neither ubiquitous nor random in its worldwide distribution. Old World cultures were clearly more patrist than those in either Oceania or the New World. Furthermore, the area of most extreme patrism in the Old World is found in one large, contiguous swath, stretching across North Africa, the Near (Middle) East, and into Central Asia. Of major significance is the fact that this same geographical territory encompasses what is today the most intense, widespread, and hyperarid of desert environments found on Earth. Maps of environmental factors related to desert conditions demonstrate distributions very similar to that of extreme patrism on the World Behavior Map.

Figure 2 is, for instance, a map identifying the most hyperarid of desert environments as determined from the Budyko-Lettau dryness ratio (Budyko 1958; Hare 1977). This ratio contrasts the amount of evaporative energy available in a given environment relative to the amount of precipitation. It is a more sensitive indicator of stress in arid environments than those used in more standard climate classification systems, which may mislead one into thinking that all "desert" environments are similar in nature. Maps identifying other stressful environmental extremes, such as greatest precipitation variability, highest mean monthly maximum temperatures, vegetation-barren regions, regions of lowest carrying capacity, regions of desert soils, and uninhabited regions show very similar distributions of their most intense, widespread aspects within this same extreme desert-patrist territory (DeMeo 1986, Chapter 2; DeMeo 1987). I have given the name Saharasia to this broad expanse of correlated extreme climate and culture.

Figure 2: The Budyko-Lettau Dryness Ratio: Contrasting the relative dryness of different arid lands around the world. Values reflect the ratio between precipitation and evaporative energy; values of 2 receive twice as much evaporative solar heat as moisture from precipitation, while values of 10 receive ten times as much.

THE GEOGRAPHICAL ASPECTS OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND HISTORY The highly structured distributions on the World Behavior Map suggested that patrism developed within Saharasia, perhaps only in ancient historical times, after which it was carried outward by migrating peoples to affect surrounding moister regions. The testing of this hypothesis regarding behavior, migrations, and climate in ancient times necessitated the creation of a new data base composed of information on ancient climatic conditions, the migrations of peoples, past social factors relevant to the treatment of infants, children, and women, and tendencies towards male dominance, despotism, sadistic violence, and warfare. A new data base containing over 10,000 individual time- and location-specific notecards was developed and assembled chronologically; each card contained information from the archaeological or historical literature identifying artifacts and/or ecological conditions for specific field sites or regions at specific times. Over 100 separate authoritative sources were consulted and outlined to compose this new data base, which allowed identification and comparison of ancient conditions across broad geographical regions for similar time periods. Times and places of widespread ecological and cultural transition, as well as the migrations and settlement patterns of peoples, were thereby identified. My predominant focus was on Saharasia and its moister Afro-Euro-Asian borderlands, but a significant amount of data was also collected for Oceania and the New World (DeMeo 1985, Ch. 6 & 7 of 1986). From the patterns observed in this data base, I was able to confirm that patrism developed first and earliest in Saharasia, at the same time that the landscape underwent a major ecological transition, from relatively wet to arid, desert conditions. Evidence from dozens of archaeological and paleoclimatic studies indicates that the great desert belt of modern day Saharasia was, prior to c.4000-3000 BCE, a semiforested grassland savanna. Large and small fauna, such as elephant, giraffe, rhino, and gazelle, lived on the highland grasses, while hippopotamus, crocodile, fish, snails, and mollusks thrived in streams, rivers and lakes. Today, most of this same North African, Middle-Eastern and Central Asian terrain is hyperarid and often vegetation-barren. Some of the now-dry basins of Saharasia were then filled to levels tens to hundreds of meters deep, while the canyons and wadis flowed with permanent streams and rivers (DeMeo 1986, Chapter 6). But what of the peoples who inhabited Saharasia during the wetter times of plenty? The evidence is also clear on this point: These early peoples were peaceful, unarmored, and matrist in character. Indeed, I have concluded that there does not exist any clear, compelling or unambiguous evidence for the existence of patrism anywhere on Earth significantly prior to c.4000 BCE. However, strong evidence exists for early matrist social conditions. These inferences are made partly from the presence of certain artifacts from those earliest times, which include: the sensitive and careful burial of the dead, irrespective of sex, with a relatively uniform grave wealth; sexually realistic female statues; and naturalistic, sensitive artwork on rock walls and pottery which emphasized women, children, music, the dance, animals, and the hunt. In later centuries, some of these same peaceful matrist peoples would progress technologically, and develop large, unfortified agrarian and/or trading states, notably in Crete, the Indus Valley, and Soviet Central Asia. The inference of matrism in these early times is also made from the absence of archaeological evidence for chaos, warfare, sadism, and brutality, which becomes quite evident in more recent strata, after Saharasia dried up. This latter archaeological evidence includes: weapons of war; destruction layers in settlements; massive fortifications, temples, and tombs devoted to big-man rulers; infant cranial deformation; ritual murder of females in the tombs or graves of generally older men; ritual foundation sacrifices of children; mass or unkept graves with mutilated bodies thrown in helter-skelter; and caste stratification, slavery, extreme social hierarchy, polygamy and concubinage, as determined from architecture, grave goods and other mortuary arrangements. Artwork style and subject matter of the later, dry periods also changes, to emphasize mounted warriors, horses, chariots, battles, and camels. Scenes of women, children, and daily life vanish. Naturalistic female statues and artwork simultaneously become abstract, unrealistic, or even fierce, losing their former gentle, nurturing, or erotic qualities; or they disappear entirely, to be replaced by statues of male gods or god-kings. Artwork quality as well as architectural styles decline for Old World sites at such times, to be followed in later years by monumental, warrior, and phallic motifs (DeMeo 1986, Chapters 6 & 7). I was not the first to note the existence of cultural transitions in the archaeological and historical record, or to note the powerful effects of environmental change upon culture, to be sure.(5) However, my work was the first to simultaneously be global in scope, systematically derived, and both time- and location-specific. With a few special exceptions, the first and earliest evidence for chaotic social conditions and patrism on Earth can be found in those parts of Saharasia which began to dry up first, namely within, or very close to Arabia and Central Asia. Those special exceptions are sites in Anatolia and the Levant, which contain some fleeting evidence suggesting that a very limited patrism may have existed as early as 5000 BCE; but this evidence exists alongside other evidence suggesting an early arid subphase in those same regions, with a complement shift towards migration and nomadic pastoralism. As such, they appear to be exceptions which prove the rule: Severe desertification and famine trauma greatly disturbed the original matrist social fabric, and promoted the development of patrist behaviors and social institutions; patrism was, in turn, compounded and intensified by widespread land-abandonment, migratory adjustments, and competition over scarce water resources.

The Genesis of Patrism in Saharasia

After c.4000-3500 BCE, radical social transformations are apparent in the ruins of previously peaceful, matrist settlements along river valleys in Central Asia, Mesopotamia, and North Africa. In each case, evidence for increasing aridity and land abandonment coincides with migratory pressures upon settlements with secure water supplies, such as those at oases, or on exotic rivers. Central Asia also experienced a shifting in lake levels and river beds coincidental to climatic instability and aridity, stimulating abandonment of large lakeshore or irrigation agricultural communities. Settlements on the Nile and Tigris-Euphrates, as well as in the moister highland portions of the Levant, Anatolia, and Iran, were invaded and conquered by peoples abandoning Arabia and/or Central Asia, which continued to dry out. New despotic central states emerged thereafter. Tomb, temple, and fortification architecture, with evidence for ritual widow murder (eg., mother murder, when performed by the eldest son), cranial deformations, emphasis on the horse and camel, and growth of the military occurs following such invasions in almost every case I have studied. As these new despotic central states grew in power, they expanded their territories, sometimes to conquer the nomadic pastoral tribes still present on the desiccating steppe. Some of these despotic states periodically invaded into the wetlands adjacent to Saharasia to expand their territories. They either conquered local peoples in the wetlands or, failing to do so, stimulated defensive reactions among them, which can be seen in the subsequent appearance of fortifications, weapons technology, and an intermediate level of patrism in those wetlands. Other despotic Saharasian states eventually vanished from the history books as aridity intensified and dried up their subsistence (DeMeo 1985, Chapter 6 of 1986). The Diffusion of Patrism into the Saharasian Borderlands Patrism appeared in the wetter Saharasian borderlands after, and only after, it first developed within the desiccating Saharasian core. As aridity gripped Saharasia, and as the armored, patrist response increasingly gripped Saharasian peoples, migrations out of the dry regions increasingly put such peoples into contact with the more peaceful peoples of the moister Saharasian borderlands. Increasingly, the migrations out of Saharasia took place in the form of massive invasions of the more fertile border territories. In these borderlands, patrism took root not by virtue of desertification or famine trauma, but by the killing off and replacement of the original matrist populations by the invader patrist groups, or by the forced adoption of new patrist social institutions introduced by the invading, conquering peoples. For example, Europe was sequentially invaded after c.4000 BCE by Battle-Axe peoples, Kurgans, Scythians, Sarmatians, Huns, Arabs, Mongols, and Turks. Each took a turn at warring, conquering, looting, and generally transforming Europe towards an increasingly patrist character. European social institutions progressively turned away from matrism towards patrism, with the far western parts of Europe, notably Britain and Scandinavia, developing patrist conditions much later and in a more dilute form, than either Mediterranean or Eastern Europe, which were more profoundly influenced by Saharasian peoples. Across the Old World, in the moister parts of China, peaceful matrist conditions likewise prevailed until the coming of the first extreme patrist Central Asian invaders, the Shang and Chou, after c.2000 BCE. Subsequent invasions by the Huns, Mongols and others would reinforce patrism in wetland China. Japanese culture remained matrist a bit longer, given the isolating influence of the China Sea and Korean Strait, until the coming of the first invading patrist groups from the Asian mainland, such as the Yayoi, around c.1000 BCE. In South Asia, the peaceful, largely matrist settlements and trading states of the Indus River valley collapsed after c.1800 BCE, under the combined pressures of aridity and patrist warrior-nomad invaders from arid Central Asian lands. Patrism spread thereafter into India, and was intensified in later centuries by Hunnish, Arab, and Mongol invasions, which also came from Central Asia. Matrism similarly predominated in Southeast Asia until the onset of progressive patrist migrations and invasions, by both land and sea, from the patrist kingly states of China, India, Africa, and Islamic regions. In sub-Saharan Africa, available evidence suggests that patrism first appeared with the arrival of various southward-migrating peoples, around the time that North Africa dried up and was abandoned. Pharaonic Egyptian, Carthaginian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Bantu, Arab, Turkish, and Colonial European influences also increased African patrism in later years (DeMeo 1985, Chapter 6 of 1986). The geographical patterns in these migrations, invasions, and settlement patterns are most striking. Two major patrist core zones appear in the data after c.4000 BCE, one in Arabia and the other in Central Asia, the respective homelands from which Semitic and Indoaryan peoples would migrate (Figure 3). These were also the first parts of Saharasia to start desiccating, though other portions of Saharasia would begin to dry up and convert to patrism within a few centuries. Another historical aspect of these irruptions of desert warrior nomads can be seen in Figures 4 and 5, which map the territories occupied at one time or another by the Arabs and Turks, respectively (Jordan & Rowntree 1979; Pitcher 1972). The territories of these two groups, who were the last of a series of invaders coming from Arabia and Central Asia, encompass fully 100% of desert Saharasia, spilling outward into its moister borderlands.

Figure 3: Generalized Paths of Diffusion of Armored Human Culture (Patrist Cultural Complex) in the Old World, For the period starting around c.4000 BCE. 1. Arabian Core 2. Central Asian Core These facts of geography explain why matrism was preserved to a greater extent in those regions most far removed from Saharasia. Regions at the periphery of Saharasia (particularly islands), such as England, Crete, Scandinavia, the Asian Arctic, Southern Africa, Southern India, Southeast Asia, and Island Asia, demonstrate a later historical acquaintance with or adoption of patrism, and a consequent dilution of patrism with pre-existing native matrist social institutions. From the various sources used to construct my data base, Figure 5 was developed, suggesting patterns of diffusion of patrism within the Old World. The vectors are only a first approximation, but are in agreement with prior studies on the migrations and diffusion of peoples. These geographical patterns, taken from the literature of archaeology and history, are independently supported by a very similar spatial pattern in the more recent anthropological data, as previously given in Figure 1, the World Behavior Map. The Diffusion of Patrism into Oceania and the New World These observations regarding the migrations of patrist peoples may be extended to include the trans-oceanic diffusion of patrism from the Old World, through Oceania, and possibly even into the New World. A map of these suggested pathways is given in Figure 6, which assumes no source region for patrism other than Saharasia. This last map was derived from the various maps presented above, including the World Behavior Map, and from other sources given in my dissertation. Additional research will clearly be needed to confirm or clarify these suggested pathways. It is significant that patrism in the Americas was identified on the World Behavior Map primarily among peoples who lived along the coasts or among peoples whose ancestors developed their earliest patrist communities on coastal regions. Furthermore, it is significant that the early patrist peoples of the Americas were the very same cultures for whom others have argued, on the basis of material culture, artwork, or linguistics, a pre-Columbian connection with the ocean-navigating patrist states of the Old World.(6) Nevertheless, a more limited patrism may have developed independently in Oceania and the New World through a desert-famine-migration mechanism similar to that argued for Saharasia, possibly within the Australian Desert, in the arid Great Basin of North America, and/or in the Atacama Desert (DeMeo 1986, Chapter 7). Figure 6. Suggested Patterns of Diffusion of Patrism Around the World. Prior to Columbus and the European migrations.

CONCLUSIONS

The theory of the Saharasian origins of armored patrism was developed from a systematic geographical review of archaeological, historical, and anthropological data. The mapping of the various data was undertaken in an attempt to better understand the genesis of patrism, and to test the predictive power of the basic starting assumptions. This was accomplished through examination of the geographical dimensions of specific social institutions which either thwart basic biological maternal-infant and male-female bonding impulses, or which indicate a high level of male dominance, social hierarchy, and destructive aggression. As such, the basic starting assumptions of the study, namely the sex-economic theory of human behavior, the matrist-patrist schema, and the causal links between desertification and patrism, have been further verified and strengthened.

These findings strongly suggest that the innate portions of behavior are limited to the pleasure-directed aspects of life and social living, which impart distinct survival and health advantages to the growing child, and work to preserve the social unit. These are the matrist behaviors and social institutions, which support and protect the bonding functions between newborn babies and their mothers, which nurture the child through its various developmental stages, and which encourage and protect the bonds of love and pleasurable excitation which spontaneously develop between the young male and female. From these pleasure-directed biological impulses come other socially cooperative tendencies, and life-protecting, life-enhancing social institutions. Such impulses and behaviors, which are prochild, profemale, sex-positive and pleasure-oriented, have been demonstrated to exist in more recent times predominantly outside the bounds of the Saharasian desert belt. However, they once were the dominant forms of behavior and social organization everywhere on the planet, before the great Old World desiccation occurred. Given the new evidence presented here, patrism, to include its child-abusive, female-subordinating, sex-repressive, and destructively aggressive components, is best and most simply explained as a contractive emotional and cultural response to the traumatic famine conditions that first developed when Saharasia dried up after c.4000 BCE, a response which subsequently spread out of the desert through the diffusion of traumatized and affected peoples, and their altered social institutions.

2. Some time after my dissertation had been completed, I learned of Riane Eisler's (1987a) study Chalice and the Blade, which indentified dominator and partnership types of social organization. These are nearly identical in concept to the respective patrist and matrist forms of social organization as defined here.

3. The structure of the argument here demands that we make a sharp distinction between facts, and theories about facts. All behavior science theories attempt to explain a variety of observed clinical and social facts. A few even make the attempt to incorporate into theory the facts of anthropology, that is, behavior in other cultures. However, most of such theories fail to be either global or geographical in nature. That is, they do not attempt to simultaneously explain human behavior among a significant number of the better-studied cultures within each world region. Most behavioral theories, if they address the anthropological literature at all, focus only upon patrist cultures, and fail to pass the test of being both systematically-derived and global. Cross-cultural studies are a great step forward in these matters, but the combined global geographical and cross-cultural approach is an additional, necessary refinement, which will force all behavioral theories to henceforth address the specific facts of history, migration, culture-contact, and natural environment.

5. My study was possible only by the grace of the prior good works of many other scholars. Besides the work of Reich, my ideas on environmental and cultural transformations drew in large measure from the prior works of Bell (1971), Gimbutas (1965), Huntington (1907, 1911), Stone (1976) and Velikovsky (1950, 1984), though I take full responsibility for the conclusions and maps presented here.

6. This finding directly challenges the assertion that all Pre-Columbian peoples of the New World arrived by migrating across the Bering Strait during glacial times predating c.10,000 BCE. If patrism had been carried into the New World at that time, it would have been more homogenously distributed. The quantity and quality of data supporting the idea of Pre-Columbian contacts has grown tremendously in recent years. For a sumary of such evidence, see Chapter 7 of DeMeo, 1986.

CITED REFERENCES

Aykroyd, W. 1974. The Conquest of Famine. London: Chatto & Windus.

Bell, B. 1971. "The Dark Ages in Ancient History, 1: The First Dark Age in Egypt". American J. Archaeology. 75:1-26.

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